COL Alexander Standish

At the not-so-tender age of 42, businessman Alexander Standish joined the war effort, recruited by the Army Air Corps to interview pilots just returned from missions for intelligence information. He was old enough to be the father of many GIs he served with, but his experience and poise proved invaluable in intelligence work. After an uneventful stint in New York City on anti-submarine command, Standish was assigned to London, where D-Day preparations were underway. Nearby, in Bletchley Park, British intelligence was cracking the Enigma code used by the Germans. Standish followed General Omar Bradley across Europe, relaying to him the latest inside information. He worked with Generals Eisenhower and Bradley in planning the D-Day invasion and subsequent strategy for taking back Europe from the Nazis. British intelligence was able to decode German messages, whose contents were often passed directly to Standish to relay to Bradley. “[Eisenhower] said, ‘My job is to stage this invasion, as you know. Your job is to keep me informed.'”
We honor you, Alexander Standish.